From U.G. (of Cella Dwellas fame), comes the first leak off the long awaited Portals. “The Mystic” comes with an eerie, but head-nodding beat from IDE. The flow is classic UG. Tales of magic, planet draining powers, thrones, and fractured bones from blows thrown, will all please longtime fans, with the powerful voice and sick delivery of a veteran – simply put, UG’s ill. Still! And like he says in the hook “sounds like nothin’ else you’ve ever heard”.

The Brooklyn spitter, no stranger to underground cyphers and hostile competition, pulls no punches and attacks with the aggression of a battle MC.

After several delays, Portals, which includes guest features from the likes of Celph Titled, Mista Sinista, Life Long, Necroand more, is here, ready for Pre-order on iTunes. You get “The Mystic” immediately upon pre-order. The full album hits all major digital retailers and streaming outlets on October 21, via Creative Juices Music.

Everything about this story is awesome! First, Marvel has revived the Black Panther comic, with a storyline called “A Nation Under Our Feet”. They then decide to promote the ‘new‘ comic series with a video series, narrated by the comic’s writer, esteemed author and political journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates (thebook is drawn by Brian Stelfreeze. For the first two videos, Marvel enlisted Prodigy of Mobb Deep and Mark the Beast, and Run the Jewels.

JEAN GRAE – “What You Came For” for MARVEL’s BLACK PANTHER

Now they have brought in Jean Grae (yes!), who contributes a new song, What You Came Forto the third installment. Not only is the Black Panther project incredible, featuring real hip hop in the videos, but we have a new song from Jean (yay!), which you can hear below and purchase on her bandcamp.

When she is not creating music, touring or acting, you can find Jean Grae tweeting her 100,000+ followers on Twitter. Follow her @JeanGreasy.

“Use Me”, first video off of POLYMER, by Tonedeff.

Tonedeff’s Long Awaited ‘POLYMER’ Drops Today

Part 4 of the Polymer Series released by Tonedeff on QN5 Music, Phantom, dropped today, along with the complete ‘POLYMER‘ album in it’s entirety. ‘POLYMER’ is the best of the prior 3 EPs (Glutton, Demon & Hunter) + all of Phantom which ties it all together.

Sound confusing? According to the man himself, Tonedeff says:

The EPs are their own experiences. Polymer is the culmination, a self-contained unit built on the bones of the EPs. Phantom is the soul of the record.

On top of that, QN5 released the first video off the album Use Me, which is the first Tonedeff video in 13 years,last month. Directed by Norway’s Daniel McStay, Use Me features intricate shadow puppets, a Fincher-esque atmosphere and rope work with a free-fall drop that had to be reset multiple times to get the shot.

There are multiple packages for sale, including enhanced CD’s, Limitted edition Vinyl, coffee table books of album art and other goodies. Need more explanation than that? Read the Full Interview below.

Interviewer: Graeme “GMS” SibirskySubject: Tonedeff

‘POLYMER’ comes out with the last installment of the 4 part series. Explain a little about how that worked, what each part is and how they fit together.I broke the album into 4 EPs, each with it’s own style and theme, each tied to a different portion of my personality. Glutton was about addiction and excess, Demon was about anxiety and stress, Hunter was about delusion and competitive nature and Phantom is about love, family and self-sabotage. All of them come together to create a complete picture of one person – in this case, myself.

How do the 4 EP’s differ musically?Musically, each part reaches different areas. A big motivating factor for this album was to show my full range of versatility as a multimedia artist and musician, so it was important to push myself into new terrain, sonically. Glutton was rooted in EDM, Demon was based on trap tempos, Hunter was synth-based boom-bap and Phantom was inspired by shoegaze and dreampop. Hearing it all together paints a solid representation of how all of my tastes combined forged something new through this LP.

You just dropped this new video, Use Me, which has you hanging by ropes like a marionette. That was crazy. How was it filming that?
It was actually pretty painful. It was super low-budget, so we used an extremely unsafe set up, where 4 people were literally pulling manilla ropes by hand to make me hover. We found a spot with an aerialist team in Bushwick that had the know how to make it happen and they were amazing. Still, I had rope rashes for weeks as well as a bruised groin. It hurt like a muffucka, but was worth it.

I have so much more appreciation for that video now! I would have been fine with everything except the rope around the neck. Do you know how much your music would be worth if you had died in an accident? Lol.Word! Trust me… I was conscious of the risk the whole time. But as they say … feel the fear and do it anyway.

Be on the lookout for LR Blitzkrieg’s upcoming project Outta Nowhere, executive produced by NessLee (also a dope MC and top battler), Chordz and Mela Mechinko both sing on the track “Hush“, recorded at Stonebrown / MCMI Studios. Ness did most of the tracks on the album, which is set to be the first release of a 4-Part series from the members of the Brooklyn Hip Hop trio HYDRA, later in 2016.

Chordz project The HighBred, featuring him and Colorado MC Sir Manley, is out now on MCMI / Intaphaze / Man@Work, produced by Boonie Mayfield from Colorado. The videos How I See and Original (We Remain) give you a taste of what’s on the album. At the end of the interview you get a preview of the next single, The Ride, featuring (feat. Zo’ Kimoni). New video coming soon.